


A Matter of Perspective

by Linorien



Series: 007 Fest 2019 [20]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond - All Media Types, London Spy
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-11 18:42:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19932727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linorien/pseuds/Linorien
Summary: Sometimes, the friend who know is the enemy you don't.





	A Matter of Perspective

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to 10k for the beta  
> Also, for villain day

###  **Alex:**

When Alex was called into the Quartermaster’s office, he assumed it was to help plan for a mission. If the details were flexible, he often asked the agents for input. It was strange to get used to, but he and the other agents grew to appreciate it. 

However, today he was being called as an unofficial member of Q branch rather than as an agent. Q said that he had been developing a programme to better detect complex coded messages. It has been on hold since he was promoted and he would like to transfer responsibility over to Alex. He didn’t foresee himself having enough time to devote to it.

This was it. The culmination of all the hard work he has done trying to impress Q. People told Alex he was a genius, but he was a child compared to Q. He’d been doing everything he could to get tutelage from the man, learn everything he could. 

This must finally be Q taking him under his wing, agreeing to mentor him. 

Alex agreed and took the thumb drive back to his office and set about transferring the program. It looked like it would be an interesting project. He was grateful that Q had a meticulous mind and organised code not unlike his own method. It made the digital notes easier to internalise and the code quicker to decipher. 

Maybe he would put in a request to be grounded for a while in order to continue working on this. 

* * *

He began to have semi regular meetings with Q, trading ideas, discussing issues. He started to feel like he was learning to think like Q. And Q was really seeing Alex as a genius too. 

It felt like the start of a wonderful mentor relationship.

Within a few months, Alex had modified the code to use shapes to help form connections. Q had started along the right track with word associations, but simple lists would not work. A more geometrical approach seemed to work. 

As he explained to Q in an update report, starting from an activity, the most common nouns could each be associated with a side of a shape, and the vertices with other verbs which could be connected to other shapes or idea kernels as he was calling them. 

For example, use ‘going swimming’ as an activity. The most common nouns are pool, goggles, sunscreen, and towels. These four words belong to the sides of the square. For the vertices: diving, swimming, driving, and tanning. These are all expected words.

But to go one step further, if you mention going swimming and tanning, you are less likely to mention waterslides or pool toys. This would be the first hint that a message might be a code. 

Q sent back a glowing report and said he need not check in for another six months. He felt a rush of pride. 

Alex left the next day for a mission to Egypt.

Six months later and his check in is met with a less glowing response. The Quartermaster seems preoccupied with something else. But Alex wasn’t good enough at reading people to know what. He simply carried on with his presentation and smiled proudly when Q told him the program was beyond his wildest dreams. 

“I’m incredibly impressed, Agent,” he said. “You’ve gone beyond the original idea too.” Q nodded silently to himself. “Why don’t you set this aside for a couple weeks to give your mind a break from it. You’ve been working hard.” A couple quick keystrokes. “In fact it looks like there might be a mission in the pipeline for you in a day or two. I’ll forward you the basics so you can start brushing up on the intel reports.”

He read the intel reports every morning. Maybe Q didn’t know that. 

“Dismissed.”

* * *

The mission was a local one. A simple international drug cartel operating out of a restaurant by the docks. Nothing out of the ordinary, but they needed all hands on deck since it was a large operation. 

* * *

The next day, he met Danny. 

A man who seemed to not know how to lie. His emotions were so clear on his face that even Alex could read them, though he did doubt his reading. Surely no one could be that innocent in a world such as theirs. 

He had forgotten that some people live different lives. 

He discovered that he was falling in love. 

* * *

When he returned to the code, he returned with a vigor he had lost somewhere along the way. Getting to know Danny had reignited his passion and made him look closer at how and why and when people lie. And when it was a lie and when it was skirting the truth. A deflection. 

He had lied about his job. Danny had deflected from his past. 

His love for Danny was muddled, but it was not a lie.

###  **Q:**

The code went too far. It was one thing to have a lie detector combined with an enigma machine to better detect and decipher coded messages from the enemy. But this software would detect lies from video alone. And not just the big lies, the lies the government told its people every day to keep them safe. The mistruths spouted in interviews with the press. The deflections politicians gave when pressed on a topic that was still top secret. 

If this code got out, the chaos was unimaginable. Society was built on the backs of lies. No one told the truth to everyone. Not on a local government scale, lying about bribery to fund one group over the other. And certainly not on a global scale where deals were conducted in secret, family ties still held more loyalty than country ties. If all that were to be exposed, it would shake people’s trust. Why should they obey laws when the enforcers didn’t? How could they be sure elected officials really represented them and would it even matter? Distrust would spread like wildfire and public institutions would crumble. 

He spoke with M. After three hours of discussion, they arrived at a stalemate. Q wanted to see the code destroyed for good. Dismantled and al records purged. M believed that if one of their agents could create it, someone else could too. And he’d rather have the same weapon. They agreed to watch Alex closely, monitor for signs of others catching wind. 

And catch wind they did. Soon every agency knew the perfect lie detector had been developed and everyone wanted it destroyed. 

Q called Alex into his office. “You have to destroy the code.”

Alex frowned. “Why?”

Q explained the dangers to society, to their own livelihood. Alex didn’t seem to understand. 

“But it would mean fewer lies. People would trust each other. Isn’t that a good thing?”

“I wish it worked that way. But it does not. You need to destroy it.”

He paused for too long. “Okay.”

Q resigned himself to what needed to be done. 

* * *

This time M agreed with Q. It was too soon after Nine Eyes and C gaining control of Smart Blood behind their backs. They could not have another rogue agent in control of a weapon like this. They needed to work fast. Before he had a chance to upload the code. 

They needed to convince the other agencies that the code had been a failure anyway. 

It was Q who pointed out that he looks very similar to Alex’s new friend. His only friend. A person for whom, surveillance indicated, he would do quite a lot for. 

It might have been humiliating, staging pictures like this, but Q was a spy and he had thicker skin than most. So he took the pictures of himself bound in leather, the pictures of himself sucking a cock, and many pictures of himself staged to look like he was selling drugs. 

###  **Alex:**

Alex returned from his mission and found an envelope on his kitchen table. No address. No markings. MI6 then. 

He opened it carefully and found pictures of Danny. Low quality, but high enough that it couldn’t be anyone but him. Pictures from his past. He didn’t know how they had found them, but he knew better than most what resources were available to the government. And Danny certainly didn’t have the tech skills to hide his digital footprint.

A note was with the pictures.  _ Destroy the code and never work on it again. If you do not, these pictures and more will be released to his employers, his friends, the press. You have three days.  _

There wasn’t anything to say when it was delivered, but surely they knew when his plane had landed and the earliest possible time he could’ve seen this. 

He threw the envelope down. “I won’t let you hurt him,” he said aloud. 

* * *

He took his computer off any network before transferring all this files onto a usb stick hidden in a combination lock. He set the code. 

Something so simple MI6 would never guess it, never assume a genius would use something so easy to guess. But something sentimental. A language Danny was fluent in. 

* * *

He sent a secure message to Q, asking for advice. Q had known about the program, had encouraged him to keep working on it. Surely he could help him. Tell him what to do to calm everyone down. 

This had to be some higher ups blowing things out of proportion. 

* * *

He had asked Danny to go on an extended picnic with him. He foolishly thought they could run. At least for a little while. 

They were waiting for him the next day when he got back from his morning run. Two agents stood on either side of the room, arms loosely grasped around guns, pointed at the floor. 007 leaned casually against the counter. And then there was Q, front and center, lounging at his kitchen table with his laptop. 

With a flash of realisation, he noticed how similar Q looked to Danny. 

Q didn’t look up, didn’t even stop typing as he asked, “Did you delete the script?”

“No.”

The agent on the right raised a tranquiliser gun and shot him faster than he could react. No one moved to catch him as he blacked out and crumpled to the floor. 

* * *

Every agent had been trained to resist torture, but they evidently had held one trick back. He woke and everything was dark, it was stuffy, and he couldn’t move. Not strapped to a table or paralysed by drugs, but somehow his body had been forced into a contortionist position in order to be stuffed into a box. He strained, pushed, screamed, but he couldn’t move. His breathing grew shorter and some part of his mind knew there was no ventilation. 

Every breath he took slowly poisoned the air with carbon dioxide. 

* * *

He didn’t know how long passed before he heard voices coming from a microphone near his ear. Asking him inane questions. He yelled at them instead. 

They stopped for a while and then Q spoke. Not the kind voice of a mentor, no, this was the hard tone of MI6’s Quartermaster, the one who dealt with 00s and security breaches in the same detached manner. The one who had laid the trap. And now he was on the receiving end.

“Why did you continue to work on this project?”

He didn’t answer. 

“As your superior, I ordered you to give up the project and delete the files. Why did you not obey?”

He stayed silent. All he could think about was Danny. He’d never see him again. And after he had opened up about his past. He would die and Danny would think he had been rejected. 

“Where is the usb drive with the files? We know you transferred it off your computer. Where is it?”

He only hoped Danny would connect the dots, find it and destroy it. If he couldn’t work on it, then at the very least, no one in MI6 should be able to use the work they destroyed him for. 

* * *

There were more questions but he blocked them out with memories of Danny. It was all he thought about until he heard a different voice. Francis. She said there was a way out. Fleeing to America. A new life. That this was just a warning. 

He didn’t know if she was telling the truth. But he grabbed at the glimmer of hope. 

“I will go to America.”

“I will destroy it.”

“I’ll never work on it again.”

_ Never make contact with anyone from this life again. _ She had to know that that would include her. She wasn’t a loving mother, but she cared for him like an engineer cared for a machine they built from the ground up. Maybe, just maybe she would care enough to tell him. 

“His name is Danny.” He breathed in sharply. “I’ll never speak to him again.”

“This can be a new start for us, too,” she said. “You’ll hate me for a while. But I love you so much.”

“I love you, too.” It was silent. He held his breath hoping to hear a door opening, footsteps, anything. “Get me out of here!”

Faintly, he heard the beeping of a program. His heart sank. He knew that sound. It was the sound that spotted a lie. 

“Get me out of here! Get me out of here!”


End file.
